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Yahoo will pay $50M to settle massive security breach

Yahoo agrees to pay a total of $50M settlement package to over 200 million U.S. victims of the massive security breach.

Yahoo, a web service provider headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and is owned by Verizon Communications through Oath Inc. faced a massive data breach happened in 2013. The email service’s 2013 data breach was known to be the largest corporate data security breach. Almost 3 billion accounts had their emails and other personal information stolen and exposed by the hackers.

The hacking was not reported publicly until 2016. Affected accounts were first estimated to over 500 million users but were lessened to only 200 million users.

Yahoo on Monday, Oct. 22, finally decided to close the issue agreeing to pay $50 million to settle the two-year-old lawsuit. Yahoo will also pay another $35 million to cover up lawyer fees related to the case. There will also be a compensation option for those small businesses and individuals to claim their losses in the said hacking. Everyone who was affected by the breach is eligible for two years of credit monitoring from AllClear ID. Lastly, users who acquired a premium Yahoo email services are qualified for a 25 percent refund.

Since Yahoo was already owned by Verizon, half of the settlement amount will be paid by them and the other half was by Altaba.